Thursday, 20 September 2012

Join us

We have just crossed one year into existence this August and
the journey has been quite enlightening. It started with all the cliché stuff
with people highlighting all the ways this was not a bright idea, or at least
the flaws in the plan. We’re not still sure if it is a bright one, but I guess
we could do without bright as long as we get to read all we want.

We experimented with a lot of stuff and iterated along the
way. This has now left us with a basic understanding of what works and what
doesn’t and the problems that need to be solved.

The paths that are in front of us right now are in the
verticals of marketing, expanding collection, helping people read, financials, design,
book recommendations and community creation. All of these claim their own time
and effort.

This requires an expansion from the present 5 member team,
which bring us to the present recruitments.

We highly value a good team. Passionate people who love
books and share our vision of making more and more books accessible to people
and hence helping them read more. More
specifically, here are the qualities that we look forward to:

1. Love for reading: This is the glue that gels us
together. Improving a service that we use and cherish ourselves is one of the
biggest drivers.

it's not something everyone relates to and we need people who do

2.Work ethic: To get books fast to people who want
to read, one after the other, day after day greatly challenges your inertia and
you need to be fast to react to events. Applying new strategies is time
dependent and requires skill as well as swiftness. Hence the importance of
completing work (and more) within deadlines.

3. Critical thinking: A good analytical thought
process to contribute ideas and challenge those of others.

4. Leadership / Sense of ownership: This is what
saves us the time of supervision. We try to build a team where everyone assumes
the ownership of swift functioning and development of bookshelf.

It is very hard to judge one’s work ethic and such on just
the basis of interviews, so we will be following a two stage procedure:

1.Interviews: People will be having one or two
rounds of interview for basic introduction and regarding their application
forms.

2.Projects: Those who clear the interviews will be
drawn into stuff we are doing with bookshelf for a small project or two. This
will give them a chance to decide which problems are they interested in working
upon and passionate about, if any. It will give us a chance to see if the
candidate is a suitable fit or not for our work culture and ideals. The final
selections will follow the performances in these projects.

So what can you look forward to working with us:

1.Books, collections and readers, lots of them

2.Editorial

3.Design

4.Marketing and publicity

5.Operations

If any point on the above list looks vague
I assure you that NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM has been mentioned lightly, you can
read the list again. And once you are settled in the team, you can venture on
new directions if you want as well.

We prioritise a good team above everything
else and will be willing to do as much P&C as needed to get the right mix.